Tweet
Not if you can help it.
Officer Friendly is a fiction – a vicious fable sold to schoolkids – who soon learn in one way or another that any interaction with a cop is a likely to be a bad interaction. You are dealing with perhaps the worst possible tag-team combination: Someone with legal power over you who is held to a different – and far more lenient – standard than you are. And therefore, you are dealing with a person who is much more likely to do things – not nice things – than you or I or any other person sans special costume and badge might be inclined to do. After all – why not? Especially if one is a bully – or an outright sadist – and the cop profession attracts exactly that type precisely because of the nature of the work. In its own way, giving a bully a badge is like giving a fat kid free reign at the candy store. Expecting him not to eat is almost silly.
Do not engage them in conversation. They will view any questioning of their authority as a provocation. Answer – if you must – in a flat monotone. Yes. No. Am I free to go?
Do not look to them for help.
Look upon cops in the same way a scuba diver does the sharks of the ocean. Both are opportunistic predators who can strike unpredictably, with devastating consequences. By exercising hypervigilance – and never making the mistake of thinking either is anything other than an opportunistic predator, one can minimize greatly the chances of becoming chum.
Officer Friendly is a fiction – a vicious fable sold to schoolkids – who soon learn in one way or another that any interaction with a cop is a likely to be a bad interaction. You are dealing with perhaps the worst possible tag-team combination: Someone with legal power over you who is held to a different – and far more lenient – standard than you are. And therefore, you are dealing with a person who is much more likely to do things – not nice things – than you or I or any other person sans special costume and badge might be inclined to do. After all – why not? Especially if one is a bully – or an outright sadist – and the cop profession attracts exactly that type precisely because of the nature of the work. In its own way, giving a bully a badge is like giving a fat kid free reign at the candy store. Expecting him not to eat is almost silly.
Do not engage them in conversation. They will view any questioning of their authority as a provocation. Answer – if you must – in a flat monotone. Yes. No. Am I free to go?
Do not look to them for help.
Look upon cops in the same way a scuba diver does the sharks of the ocean. Both are opportunistic predators who can strike unpredictably, with devastating consequences. By exercising hypervigilance – and never making the mistake of thinking either is anything other than an opportunistic predator, one can minimize greatly the chances of becoming chum.
Of course they found nothing, so after a pretty embarrassing search I was "let go."
Comment